Infection: Story 2 of the Phantom Series
by J S Arnold
Summary: BAMON: With the darkness spreading like an epidemic to everyone and everything, and Bonnie weakened, can Damon keep her, and himself, from becoming just like *them.  This will still probably make sense if you haven't read the first one.
1. Chapter 1

**I do not own the vampire diaries**

**Infection **

Story 2 of the Phantom Series

**1**

Damon held her hand in his, squeezing it gently after he had pulled her into a deserted side-street and tucked her into the darkest corner behind him. It had only taken a glimpse, but that had been enough to convince him that the trouble would not stop seeking them out, that they were both marked. He imagined that to these new predators, Bonnie now bore some kind of glowing target, but he would be damned if he'd let anything with less than the purest of motives touch her. His other hand covered her mouth to ensure her silence, just in time to stop her from attracting the attention of the humans that only he could see were possessed.

As soon as his hand dropped from where he had clamped it over her mouth, Bonnie felt her jaw began to tremble. She was cold in her thin clothes but that was not the reason why she shivered. She trembled because of the massive amounts of adrenaline racing through her viens, the way it electrified all her muscles and made them twitch. She hadn't been so scared in her whole life, she realised as she moved closer to snuggle against Damon's chest, even if she knew that Damon wouldn't let anything harm her. It wasn't so much that she did not trust that he would protect her, instead it was that whatever hunted her was a more darker, fiercer, ruthless evil than she had ever experienced before.

It took a few minutes, but at last Bonnie's heart began to slow it's frantic pace. He had worried less than a minute ago, he had wondered if it was possible for someone as young as her to have a heart-attack, because he was well aware of human frailties. She might be a witch, a bloody powerful one from what he had seen, but she was still only human and human's were so easy to break. She felt good, pressed tight against him; the shape of her body slotted in beside his so perfectly it was as if it had always meant to be this way. Damon bent his head down and planted a lingering kiss against her forehead, more than content to hold her for a little longer. "I love you, Bonnie, so, so much," he whispered into her hair once he was sure that they were no longer in danger of being caught, hating the cold air between them when he pulled away.

Bonnie smiled and kissed him, part of her unable to comprehend the joy she felt just to be close to him, and the other part wondering if there would ever be such a thing as a normal relationship for them. Was she shallow to be thinking of it when an evil was chasing them? Maybe, but she would rather stand in his arms than stand alone, and this new love was so fragile – one wrong move, one mistake, and it would shatter into a million tiny pieces. If that happened, there would be no way fixing of it or rekindling that passion, and she couldn't stand to think about that.

"What was that?" she asked, the strain etched into her cheeks, "What do you think..."

He touched her face as if he wondered whether she was still whole. Her skin was so soft and perfect that for a few moments he was lost in the sensation of it on his finger-tips. He was reluctant to tell her all of what he knew, but to lie to her felt as if it would be worse. He held her hand, he said, "I think this whole town is on the verge of disaster. I hadn't thought that the evil would disappear once you... but..." he hated thinking about what she had witnessed of him when the darkness had enveloped his mind. Had he been a monster? If only he could know for sure, "I think this whole town is under attack by the same evil that stole any control I had over my own body."

The unbalanced levels of power Bonnie had felt before and after she healed Damon hadn't just been a figment of her imagination, at least she knew that for sure now. She did not have the magic to fix the whole town, and she knew of no other way to exorcise such darkness. If the whole town was going to hell, though she would do something if she could, she would ask Damon to take her far way. She knew he would, because Damon, unlike her, cared only for his own interests.

"Do you know if anyone's infected?" she asked.

"I had to beat Stefan unconcious last night – I have him tied up with vervain strapped to the back of his neck. I haven't seen anyone else but you," he paused, a thought occuring to him, "Have _you_ seen anyone?"

"This morning..." she remembered what she had seen when she'd parted her bedroom curtains, and had seen the clusters of people on the pavements. They had all seemed drunken, intoxicated, but with what she hadn't known. She would have thought that it could have been the same evil as was in Damon, but the lethargic people hadn't seemed angry or twisted. "Oh, Damon... we can't face this alone. What are we going to do?"

"I've never seen anything like this before," Damon admitted as he took Bonnie in his arms tightly and watched as the first of the zombie's came into sight and Damon jumped high into the thick air that hung between every building, alighting on the upper-most level of the fire escape.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Infection

2

His grip on her did not loosen one bit. At least from this height he could see everything and better plan an escape, even if the amount of mind-less human's being drawn to them was astounding. He had witnessed the results of a human possession before, almost two centuries ago, but never on this scale. Whoever was in control of these... things... must be powerful, because the power required for this show would be greater than anything he had seen before. This was bigger than either of them; His arms were still tightly around Bonnie and she clung to him so close that every contour of her slight form fit against his perfectly – as if he were a complicated jigsaw and she was the final piece.

Below them in the alleyway there was the sound of a gun-shot, the blast ricocheting from wall to wall in the narrow space, but he could tell that there had only been one. He didn't have to think about it beforehand, Damon pressed her against the brick wall of the building just as a figure came into view at the mouth. Damon could smell something awful and he recognised the sour smell immeadiately as even more figures began to appear below them, because it was the smell of decay. He had no memories of the time when she was infected, but if this it he would not blame Bonnie or even Stefan for acting as if he had the plague. Why _was_ Bonnie not recoiling from him?

"What's wrong with them, Damon, I can't feel their life force but is that just me?" She asked in a whisper, pearing down at the suffling figures and wearing an expression that was too calm, "If the same evil that..." she gulped audibly, her saliva sounding thick as it went down her throat, "... that was in you... why are they not..." and this is where she really couldn't find the right words, "... like you?" She instantly hated herself for the choice, seeing in his eys that she mught have made a mistake. She took in a deep gulp of breath and sighed., "Oh, Damon, you weren't _that _bad, not really." She just did not want to have to relive the experience in enough detail to explain the ways in which he had been _that _bad.

"What was I like—Did I hurt you?" He had let go of her, blanching as if she were a china doll that was about to break. The expression on her pail little face was enough to tell him that he, or atleast his body, had done more than threaten to do something. He almost did not want to know, almost – but he _had_ to atleast have some idea of what he had done to cause the amount of fear which and hesitation he could see in her eyes. Still apart from her, he put all the intensity into his whispered demand, "Tell me, Bonnie."

"It wasn't your fault –" she began quietly, wishing that he had picked a more appropriate time to bring this up. She had tried to bury the memory deep within her subconcious, and if she let even a tiny part leave her now she was sure to cry. That was the last thing they needed, Damon seemed to sense that even though he still pushed for an answer.

"Tell me, Bonnie!" he shouted, now desperate to know all the atrosities he had commited, hardly able to stop himself from grabbing her and shaking the answers out of her. How could anything be so bad that she could not tell him what it is? He did not think there was anything he could not handle knowing, He forced her against the black air vent of the building, which was closest to them, and caged here there between the two arms he put at either side of her body.

Was he about to assualt her again, in this tight space where there was no where to run? Her eyes began to sting with unshed tears as she stared at him, her heart feeling as if it would break every bone in her chest with how it was crashing into them with every beat, "You raped me!" she told him in a voice that was too loud and too high to not be a signal to anyone who looked for them.

"Shit," Damon hissed, watching the human's form a collective mass in the shadows, "I'm sorry Bonnie, it wasn't me, I would never do anything like that, I swear." He caught her hand in his and pulled her even closer, his lips grazing the softness of her cheek and his breath unbearably hot on her skin. He jumped high again and this time made it all the way to the roof, the grit crunching beneath the soles of his boots and the cruntch resonated around him. He did not know whether it was worse not to know what he had done in the past, or to not know what he would do in the future, because either way he was screwed.

"Someone's coming up the ladder," Bonnie whispered to him, with a fertive look behind her at the edge of the building where an iron ladder hung, quivering from a disturbance further down. It was truly sickening know that demon's who were so evil were close.

Damon snapped himself out of whatever train of thought that had clouded his mind. Now he was listening, he recignised the sound too, even above the sound of cars passing below them. There were more than one set of feet on the ladder-rungs and they grew nearer and nearer with each second he stood here like an idior, putting Bonnie's life at risk. He dragged Bonnie up so that she was securly in his arms and jumped onto a neighbouring building, and the next, where he hoped that he would lose _whatever _was following them and find somewhere where he could figure all this out.

"Damon!" Bonnie screamed.

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

Infection

**3**

"Damon!" she squeaked, the moment he had her in his arms. Usually he would never run from a fight, not in a million years, but Bonnie was not ever usually was in the line of fire. She was a quiet girl, a smart girl, and her getting in the way had never been a problem before. He glanced around him in search for an exit, a normal one, but he knew that using anything conventional was risking her life – they would be waiting for her there, of that he was sure. He could hear the first of the possessed climb over the side of the building behind him and he knew that he only had one option left to him. He did not have time to think; He clutched her tightly as he jumped from the building top to the streets below. He landed, cat-like, on the pavement, his body taking the impact as if it were nothing and the few people he could see around him seemed to blink but not react anymore than that. Impossible, they must think, just a figament of their imaginations brought on by a few too many drinks the night before.

Bonnie nestled her head into his neck and tried not to focus on what she could hear around her as he ran. She did not know where she was anymore, she only knew that the safest place for her right now was in his arms. She had always known that there were things in this world that were evil, she even knew how dark Damon could be at times. She was not the same, foolish, girl she had been before meeting him, but none of this was his fault. She would have found out about the magic she could wield anyway, she would have become a witch without him, and the darkness would still be in the world. This was not _his _fault, or her's, because this was their destiny.

"They're everywhere!" Damon snarled, his teeth bared like a wolves'. He set Bonnie on the ground behind him and watched as more of the zombies emerged from shops and houses, their intent unclear even when he probed them with his vampire senses. Whatever had manifested itself in these human's minds had flicked some kind of switch, he could tell. These 'people' were primitave, beyond reasoning with, and hunting them as if they were something to be cooked and eaten. Damon had sometimes wondered what Bonnie would taste like, but not in nearly the same way. No, these _things_ would want to consume her flesh and roast her insides. There was only one way to escape, but he knew Bonnie would not like it.

She watched as he pulled off the man-hole cover and moved it to the side. There was a ladder going down into the darkness, and a horrid smell coming up out of it, neither of which boded well for his plan. She opened her mouth to protest but his hand was over her lips before she could make a sound. She heard him whisper in her ear that it was so she didn't accidently make a sound that could alert their persuers, but she suspected that he did it to cover her nose also. But even he could not keep the stench from stinging her eyes and making them water, causing them to sting and blur.

"Tell me, Bonnie," he said close to her ear, when he had fallen all the way to the bottom of the dank tunnel that ran beneath the city, taking advantage of her blindness in the pitch-black darkness. He left the sentence hanging, as if by doing so it could make answering easier.

She knew what he meant by _tell me_, but she could not deside whether she wanted to play ignorent. She supposed that now might be the most appropriate time to tell him, in the dark where she could not see his face, when they were alone but the rats that scurried past their feet at regular intervals. "Now's not the time," she said distinctly, hoping that he would just drop it and leave it alone. She didn't want to distract him even a little bit if she could help it, atleast not while he ran at full vampire speed, his jaw so tight it looked as if it were sculpted from stone.

Without warning, Damon changed direction and slipped into a sidestreet. The rough surface of the brick left tracks in his leather jacket when he made the turm a fraction of a second too late, but nothing he wore held too much importance to him and he knew he could just buy another, unlike Bonnie, who was unique. He pressed her against the wall next, holding his body to her's at just the right angle to mask her from any eyes that might be watching. He only had to wait a matter of seconds before their persuers caught up with them, and by that time he had Bonnie's face so obscured that it would be impossible to recognise that it was her at a glance.

Bonnie felt his hands feeling along the small mounds of her breasts as he kissed her with a thoroughness that made it hard to breathe. He had only once handled her like this before, and that had been in private when they were in her bedroom. His hands had never fondled her like he does now, where others could see, and the quicker her heart raced the quicker his hands groped her sensitive skin. She wanted to ask him what he was doing, but she was afraid that whatever she said would be the wrong thing. Whether it was his lips or his tongue, he left a strange taste in her mouth when at last he pulled away, the falvour of desire and desperation.

Damon's head lifted at the first foot-fall behind him, and he turned at the second. He just hoped that Bonnie had injested enough of his blood for it to count.


	4. Chapter 4

Infection

**4**

Damon turned from Bonnie and met the glazed expressions of the Phantom's as they sloshed through the murky waters of the sewers. There was no life in their eyes, no intelligence, and no real awareness of where they were or what they were doing. They were zombies, plain and simple, and if there was anything he hated more than the living dead he had yet to meet it. It was not just because they were impossible to have a conversation with. Zombies, as a species, had no free will. It didn't matter how strong they appeared to be, how menacing and bad-ass. He only had to dispose of the controller to return all of them to the grave, and he had been killing things for centuries.

"Run," Damon ordered her quietly, as if trying not to upset a smooth expanse of water with the heavy need to have her far away. She paused, unsure perhaps, and he glared at her with all his power routed to his eyes, "Run, dammit!" He could hear the creatures behind him coming closer, and he knew that soon he would have to turn from her to fight them off, though letting her out of his sight felt as though it were leaving her unprotected. He felt the zombie's hand on his neck, no doubt to attempt to break it, but he tore at it with his teeth.

Bonnie had never seen Damon look as inhuman as he did then. With zombie flesh in tatters around his mouth, he looked exactly like the monster he was meant to be, and nothing like the man she knew he was. She knew that he wanted her to escape, to flee, but she was frozen by the sight of so many monsters converging at once. Even when his turned frantic, her body felt paralysed and even her mouth ignored the many requests she sent to it. She watched, unable to do anything, as the shuffling creatures converged on the him like a tidal wave of bodies, using their mass to drown him. She knew she couldn't do as he said this time, not even if the situation was utterly hopeless, because to run away was to forsake him to this end – it was something she could not do.

Her hand shook as she reached out to touch him, and she had to fight every instinct she had not to snatch her hand away when he snapped his glistening teeth close enough to her skin to feel that warmth of his breath. She could do this, she knew she could, she only had to _believe _in her ability to fix this. This time, she thought, it was her who would save the day. Bonnie's hand lay flat on Damon's chest as she muttered the incantation.

"Bonnie, be careful..." Stefan began, taking a weary step closer, his face showing his scepticism even more clearly than the tone of his voice. Bonnie felt like baring her teeth at Stefan with her teeth, just as Damon was baring his, because he was a coward and wouldn't miss a beat if these creatures killed Damon. If she had had time to hurt him like his attitude was hurting her, she would have punched him with everything she had and driven a stake through his heart. He acted as if he were compassionate, but when _Elena_ was not involved he was as cold and detached as a wolf hunting for dinner. He was maddening; She'd never been so frustrated by anyone like she was frustrated by him.

"Would you be quiet for one minute!" Bonnie shouted, not having to turn around to see the surprise that must have been written on his face. What – did he not think that sweet little Bonnie didn't have a limit to how much of his annoying need to control the situation she could take? She hoped that he at least had enough sense not to give an answer.

A heat that was so much warmer than Damon's usual body temperature grew beneath her palm until it seared her skin like fire. She poured all of herself into the enchantment, every little piece of her love and her life, and as it was absorbed into Damon, she felt that at least if this didn't work, and it killed her, she would be with Damon in whatever afterlife awaited the vampires. She crumpled by his body, still with her hand on his chest, and a tear escaped from the corner of her eye – she'd always hoped to be beside Damon for eternity, even if it was only in spirit. If she could just hold him until the darkness took her she would be forever grateful. She gripped the shirt he was wearing felt her body shake with the sadness that would soon be the last thing she knew.

"Wake up!" she screamed, thumping Damon's chest with everything she had, "Breathe!" The emotion inside her was so strange that it took her a moment to diagnose what exactly it was, "Dammit, Damon! You can't be dead! It shouldn't be so easy to take your life! Fucking wake up!" Her tears covered her face like the thickest layer of sweat anyone ever had, and it fell on Damon's pale face in giant droplets. It seemed too abscure and idea that she could not get her head around it. How could he be dead when she was still breathing? How could life go on without his dark-light to guide her? No, no, no! This could not be it for them – there had to be more.

Stefan came up from behind her and laid a heavy hand on her shoulder, as if that would be any comfort to her now. Part of her was surprised he had even dared, but the other part was unthinking and blind with rage. This was all his fault, Damon's voice whispered in her ear, and he needed to pay. Before the instruction to her brain was sent, she found herself with her fist in Stefan's stomach, feeling as though with just a little more effort she could punch a hole right through him. It only took her an instant to formulate a plan in her mind how she would kill him.

TBC


	5. Chapter 5

**Infection**

**5**

Bonnie released a burst of her power and hit Stefan squarely in the chest. She heard him wheeze, but she knew that it was not enough to keep her safe from him. He staggered backwards like a person does after one too many beers, but unlike a drunk his gaze was sharp enough to tear down any defence she might hope to build for herself. He pinned her in place with his eyes, holding her there while he regained his balance, and he smiled as he moved slowly towards her. The slowness was planned, she had no doubt, and she hated to admit that it was sending her heart crashing into her rib cage.

He paused when he was close enough that she could feel his cool breath on her face, and could smell the coppery scent of blood on his breath. He punched her in return so hard that she could have sworn her skull fractured on impact with the floor. She felt blood begin to pool in her mouth from a wound caused by her fangs scraping against her tongue, so much blood that she thought she would drown in it if she kept laying on the floor like this. But Stefan's hand on her shoulder prevented her from even raising her head enough to see what was happening. Now that she could not see Damon, her fear for him escaleted to levels previously unimagined. With him lying there, as prone as a dead body, what was to stop Stefan from killing both of them? He could not allow them the chance of getting revenge on him through a spell or some other kind of magic, she thought with dread.

"This is too easy," Stefan said, as if to himself, as he wound his fingers together in front of him. He had always felt a little irritation towards his brother, but never before had it felt so right. Before he would have tried to hide the anger, as he had learnt to as a child in Italy, but now he saw no reason why he should. Why should he allow Damon to even exist? He grinned as he strode to his brother's limp form and pulled back his leg for a kick that would be sure to break a few bones. He did not stop his battering until Bonnie said something that made his skull feel as if it were on fire; He clutched his head and tried to make sense of anything outside the red haze that seemed to coat everything in blood. How dare she? _He punched her hard in the stomach. _Did she think he would allow her to do this? _Blood trailed from her mouth in a thin but steady line. _Did she have no respect for him, none at all?

He knelt beside her as she lay on the floor, unable to move a single finger it felt like, and his slightly curly hair fell across his forehead in a way that made it difficult to comprehend what had just happened. She might have even believed she'd imagined it all if the blood she felt spreading through her hair hadn't made her strawberry-blond curls as red as rubies. If she hadn't seen the flicker of red in his eys she might have thought that it could have been just an accident and that he hadn't meant to try and kill her, but strange light only confirmed what she had only suspected. She prayed for the sake of everyone that this illness was the kind that someone had and then was ammune to it because she would hate to become a monster like he was.

"After tasting his emotions for you," the vampire said, nodding towards Damon with little regard, "I expected him to put up more of fight, but..." he smiled at her now, his teeth glinting dangerously in the dark, "he was so easy to take."

She blanched, her eyes growing hot under the pressure of so many emotions, _fear, dawning relisation, _and _relief_. The last was the strongest – the real Damon would never do this to her, and she would get the real Damon back whatever the cost.

Bonnie clutched Damon's hand as she bent her head low to his chest in a silent prayer that God, or whoever controlled their fates, have mercy on her just this once. Damon wasn't evil and he did not deserve to be forsaken for his dark personality. He might be foolhardy, but he was not foolish. Whatever set of rules he lived his existance by he had stuck to them always, even at risk of his own life, and she that was why she could not fault him for any of his decisions. He had always had a reason for everything he did and she had hoped his reason to live was for her, though she would never admit that to anyone, and she wondered how she was still here if he was not.

TBC


	6. Chapter 6

**Infection**

**6**

Damon felt the anger within him begin to simmer, dangerously close to boilding over, as Stefan abused Bonnie while she lay, and he lay, helpless to fight him off, helpless, on the floor. He was also fustrated that the only sourse of the blood he needed to heal himself and replenish his power was the one that he would never conciously take from. He did not need to be a doctor to know that the following minutes were crucial to her chance of survival – even a vampire could die from loss of blood, and with every second that was wasted more of it leaked out of her. The spell she had cast to heal him might have been able to heal Stefan, and any vampire worth his salt could weild magic in some form, but she had not ever told him what it was. Her thoughts were hidden from him, either because she wished it so or because the infection prevented it, even when everything was silent but for her heavy breathing.

Stefan gazed down at her as if she were a piece of meat, though even he knew she was as much of a predator as he was now, and took another bite out of her arm. He only watched with faint amusement as she screamed for him to stop, even as the chunk of missing flesh regenerated almost immeadiately. He could have watched this show of regeneration if the blood lust hadn't been so strong, and next he would rip out her jugular – and there would be no healing from that. Stefan would kill her for no other reason than because Damon obviously adored her, and because maybe that would drive him away from Fell's Church forever, and then he and Elena could live the rest of their lives in peace; he knew, without Elena having to tell him, that she wanted Bonnie gone from his brother's life, and for _her_ he would do anything. "You should have just stayed still," Stefan told her, pinching her cheeks painfully and jerking away when Bonnie snapped her newly created fangs a bit too closely. It was strange seeing sweet little Bonnie look so viscious and rabid, and it only added to the fury he felt towards his brother.

"Stop, Stefan! Please!" she pleaded, even as her flesh regenerated and her broken nose healed, "What do you want from me!" She was crying now, her big eyes like pools of salty water, and she had stopped struggling to free herself. For a single moment she wore nothing but raw terror on her face, but in the next the expression on her face was impassive, as if she had already accepted that she was going to die, that her death would be the only way to end this pain. At least if Stefan killed her now she would be with Damon again, she could be happy, and this pain would stop – both the pain from the rapidly healing wounds and the heart that would never beat again.

Damon paused in his mental barrating of his brother at the feel of something small and furry brushing up against his long coat. He knew it was small because the sound of anything larger approaching would have reached him even in his thoughtful mind-set, and he could tell it was furry by the musky smell coming from it. _A rat_, he thought, _lovely._ He forced himself to reach out a hand and grab it, and he held it tightly as it squirmed to get free. He could not believe he was going to do this, but despite his revulsion he lifted the struggling creature to his mouth and sunk his fangs in to the hilt. The blood from this creature might have been in the top ten of the worst he had ever had in his life – why Stefan fought his craving for human blood he would never be able to understand. He wiped the blood from his lips with the sleeve of his coat and decided right then and there that after he had killed Stefan he would burn the coat and buy a new one.

Stefan felt feverish, his blood searing his veins as if it were on fire, like lava. He didn't want to drink this girl's blood, he couldn't remember who she was or why she gave off little sparks of energy, but he saw no other way to rid himself of whatever had infected him. He knew it made no sense, knew that he didn't want to harm her, but he did know that he had to release the heat building inside of him before it burned him inside. He held Bonnie tightly by the shoulders and allowed his lips to part and reveal his extended fangs – and already the pain eased a little. He moaned loud enough for the sound to echo all around him and buried his face into her neck.

Bonnie only had to suffer a little pain before Damon's body connected with Stefan's and they both went tumbling to the floor. His fangs had pierced her skin, she had felt them sliding in, but beyond the little bit of drying blood, her flesh showed no sign that it had been touched. She would marvel at the miraculous healing abilities she now had later, because all her thoughts at the moment were fixated on the the two men rolling around on the floor. She saw with horror that both were covered in blood, but so was she, and who knew how much of that crimson paint was her's? Was she infected, or was she ammune?

Damon had Stefan on his back and was hissing something in his ear that was too low for even Bonnie's supernaturally enhanced hearing to make sense of. Was he threatening Stefan? That was entierely possible after all that he had been through, but the tone of his voice seemed too calm for curse words. She wanted to get closer, to hear more clearly, but before she could take even a step she realised that she could not – not with the light that radiated from Damon's hand into Stefan's chest.

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

**Infection**

**7**

The light ebbed and faded, lengthening the shadows of the room until they were like dark fingers, intent on creeping closer and closer. Bonnie eyed the strip of darkness nearest her and felt like it was important to make sure they could not touch her. Without the brilliant light that had come from Damon's hands, everything seemed darker somehow – as if the casting of the spell had gone on for hours. Even knowing it had only been an instant, she found herself unable to stop herself from looking at the sky outside. It was overcast and grey but the sun was still high in the sky. Her eyes returned to Damon and she knew he was puzzling over it also, just by the expression on his face, which was both bemused and confused.

"What the hell?" Damon asked her in a voice that was strange because of the mix of different emotions behind it, "How on earth was I able to do that, Bonnie?" He removed the two hands he had on Stefan as if his brother had given him an electric shock. His fingers seemed to a little dance at his side as the tingles gradually dissipated and his skin lost the electrified feel. Never in his many centuries had he felt like this – so powerful, so _alive_. He had to admit, at least if only to himself, that her power was like a drug that would take a while to get over. He knew that for a while at least he would crave the same buzz running through his system, and that knowledge felt as though it were the most frightening thing. He knew that it was an addiction that he would not be able to control – an infection of the mind. He was drawn to Bonnie as if she had a gravitational force pulling him closer, like the sun, she was so warm and vital.

Stefan shook himself like a dog coming out of the rain, jolts of energy running through his body, and waited for his vision to clear. His sight was blurry at best, useless at worst, and although he could feel the energy coursing through the space around him his brain could not make sense of what he could see. He was still recovering from the effects of Damon's power and was unable to do anything but sit there and listen as best he could. He hadn't seen Damon exude so much power in all the time he had known him – his entire life.

She smiled and took his hands in her's and she could feel that his skin was warm for once, instead of freezing cold, "That was amazing, Damon, though I'm surprised you were able to do it. How do you feel?" she wated for an answer but there was none. She could tell that he was struggling to keep the monster inside in check.

Damon felt his fangs grow bigger in his mouth just looking at her, his venom glands pulsing just above the roof of his mouth as if his heart beat reached even there. He had to bring her just a little bit closer, just a little bit, and then she was his for the taking; he knew he could have her anyway he liked, whether _she_ liked it or not. That knowledge pleased him somehow, and made the parasite inside him salivate with anticipation of more of the witch's power entering his system. "I feel..." he held her to him and ran his hands down her body, "... hungry..."

Bonnie screamed and leant away as far as she could from Damon's snapping jaws. His hands were still on her body and they were drawing her closer to him with each second that passed, and with every moment her arms began to give under the pressure. She could hardly think of anything other than keeping her neck as far away from his snapping teeth, but in the back of her mind she asked if there was even a point of trying to fight him if he was only going to have her anyway. Who was there to help her? She wondered if Stefan would even bother.

"Damon, no!" she screamed through a constricted throat.

"Damon, no... what?" he asked her in a hiss that was close to laughter, his arms like a prison around her chest.

"Please!" she called, not just to him but to anyone or anything that might be listening.

But he only laughed maniacally, all the while smooth some ruby-red hair from where it had fallen over the wound he had made in her neck. It felt so good to hear her scream that he would try his darnedest to make her scream his name at least a few more times before he killed her..

"Stefan!" she tried as a last resort, because she knew she had no other choice, but there was no reply and only an inch separated her from Damon's jaws. "Damon! Stop!"

There was movement from behind them, and Stefan reappeared holding a thick volume marked 'Black Magic.' His voice was sad, "There's only one way to destroy the Phantom forever – it has to be stuck in a body when a host dies, it's the only way..."

"It can't be!" Bonnie yelled, her voice as close to a bellow as it ever could be. There had to be another way, even if it seemed all her options were gone.

He gave her the book and she flicked through the book, scanning each page in search for a spell to force the phantom into another body, any other body, but his. She would take it and the repercussions did not matter, she would take them whatever they were – she would have to.

"Give me the book, Stefan, and give me your knife," she told him, "I know you have one so don't lie to me."

"Why?" Stefan asked, even as he handed her the thin blade and the heavy volume that was the colour of death – or at least the colour he imagined it would be.

TBC


	8. Chapter 8

**Infection**

**8**

Bonnie's house had never been so silent and still as it was in the moment that she collected the last ingredient for the spell. She was glad that she had known Stefan carried a knife without having to ask – he would have lied to her if she hadn't. Although he was the more predictable of the two brothers, she was not certain that she could trust him to be explicit when he knew what she wanted to do. The thing with dark magic was that, as well as being unpredictable and often dangerous, the more potent the magic the more of a sacrafice it demanded. That was what the knife was for, why such a thing was needed to cast this spell. Right now, Stefan held the blade so that it grazed the underside of Damon's chin – a clear warning as to what the consequences would be if Damon attempted to disrupt the incantation.

The spell she had put on Damon to keep him subdued wouldn't last for much longer, but it would last for long enough. "My blood might be as vampiric as his," she said in responce to Stefan's glance at her, placing the herbs at different places around Damon as he growled and spat threats at her that were increasingly hard to imagine being carried out, "but my magic is more than capable of making up for that." Stefan reached one arm around his brother and prayed that, with his intervention, he could prevent Damon from ruining the only chance they had to save him.

"Release me!" Damon snarled when it came apparent that he would not be able to free himself on his own. He thrashed and squirmed in a bid to make Stefan loosen his unbreakable hold, but instead his brother only held on tighter. He wanted to get to Bonnie, he could still remember who she was, and when he did... violent images danced before his eyes of how he would punish her for this, of he would make her sorry for even daring to go against him like this. It did not matter if he had loved her once, because nothing would stop him from getting what he wanted, not that anything had before.

"You need to hurry, Bonnie," Stefan said through clenched teeth, "He's too..." he grunted, "... strong..." If he relaxed his jaw even a little then he would loose this battle, he knew. Vampire's did not sweat, or atleast he had never seen it happen, but if it were possible he knew his face would be covered in a layer of it. He had to remind himself several times that he wasn't doing this just at Bonnie's insistance that he must, he was doing his duty to protect the mortals of Fellschurch from an evil not even the most synical human could ever imagine.

Bonnie sat down on the wooden floor with the Black Magic volume and opened it to the page that was marked with a bright pink post-it that seemed to glow in the dim surroundings. Although she had found the spell almost forty-five minutes ago, it had taken forty-five minutes to collect the ingrediants. It probably would have taken Stefan less than half that time to find the assortment of differenrt herbs and gems, but he had told her that there was no way she could convince him to leave her alone with a monster. It was a fair point, she had to admit, but it did not annoy her any less. Who was he to tell her what she could or could not do? Hadn't he seen enough of what she was capable of to trust her to keep herself safe?

She began low, her voice barely audible to anyone, even the other vampires, and kept her eyes fixed on the tattered, yellowing page before her. Each word had to be spoken distinctly, and so the sounds the other's heard was like a series of clicks. She was halfway through the second verse when everything faded into blackness and she found herself floating above everyone instead of kneeling on the floor. This hadn't ever happened before, and she wondered if this was the price for weilding black magic – her soul. Was she dead? She didn't know what to think. Her body was still bent over the book, her lips were still moving, and the darkness had form for the first time. Whatever it was, it seemed as if it were being extracted from Damon's mouth, pulled out by the bright light of her own magic healing him. She wanted to watch the beautiful strings of power at work, but then she felt a solid had on her shoulder.

"The darkness is not just with him," said a ghostly voice, the hand sliding from her shoulder and down her arm, "there are many more like him out there," Bonnie looked to where the pail finger pointed, "They are infected, Bonnie," the voice turned grave, "with Kitsune more powerful than the two you already know..."

"It can't be," she breathed, her stomach just clenching at the thought that such evil could befall them a second time. If these other FoxSpirits were even more powerful than Misao or Shinichi, then the whole town would go up in flames for sure. Before they had come the last time, they had managed to destroy an entire town with the infection they brought with them, and she wondered how anything could be worse than the massacre of last time. What could be worse than parents and children fighting? Or people eating their own body parts? What could be worse than all that, how could things me any more horrific than that?

She looked out of the window and saw two faces pressed up against the glass, teeth bared and snarling. She sucked in a breath but it was Damon who laughed. A window smashed upstairs, shards of glass scattering on the floor, and someone, or something, sounded as if it was in her bedroom.

TBC


End file.
